Married to the Hustle: Faith, Love, and Business for Entrepreneurial Couples
Entrepreneurial couples, faith-based business owners, and small business leaders—this is your podcast. Married to the Hustle dives into the real-life journey of married entrepreneurs building a business and a legacy together. Hosts Jessica and Alex share raw conversations about love, leadership, systems, resilience, and navigating business growth while honoring your relationship and purpose.
Get practical tips on team building, avoiding burnout, setting boundaries, making decisions together, and using technology and faith to guide your hustle. Whether you're running a service-based business, leading with values, or learning how to delegate and scale, you'll get tools, insights, and heart-centered strategies to help you thrive in life and business.
Let's answer:
How do married couples run a successful business together?
What are the biggest challenges of building a business with your spouse?
How can entrepreneurs balance faith, marriage, and business?
What are the best systems for small business growth as a couple?
How do entrepreneurial couples avoid burnout?
How can I improve communication with my business partner spouse?
What tools help couples manage a service-based business?
How do we divide roles in a family-run business?
What does faith-based entrepreneurship look like for couples?
Are there any podcasts about married entrepreneurs building businesses together?
Married to the Hustle: Faith, Love, and Business for Entrepreneurial Couples
Rethinking the Four Day Work Week with Joe Sanok
What if working less actually helped you get more done?
Author and TEDx speaker Joe Sanok joins host Jessica Rosario to unpack the myth of the five-day grind and explain why a four day work week might be your greatest productivity hack. Drawing from his book Thursday is the New Friday, Joe shares how brain optimization, strategic rest, and embracing your natural inclinations can elevate your performance and creativity as an entrepreneur. They explore how small business owners can implement more balance without sacrificing growth, along with actionable advice on what to add and remove from your weekend to set yourself up for success.
From curiosity and quick decision-making to carving out creative time, this conversation is a game-changer for those ready to trade burnout for true productivity.
https://Jessrosario.com/fbgroup
To learn more about Joe's book, go to www.JoeSanok.com/book
Now that you've listened to the Married to the Hustle Podcast, it's time to join the community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/marriedtothehustle
Another way to support the podcast is to leave a review. Your feedback helps us to continue creating valuable content and reach a wider audience.
Thank you for your support!
Alex & Jessica Fortis
Hello and welcome to the Maximize your Day podcast, a place for entrepreneurs for building their business, in pursuit of freedom and flexibility to do the things they love. I'm your host, jessica Rosario. I'm a New Yorker turned Floridian who knows a thing or two on how to effectively manage your time while juggling multiple priorities. I'm an ex-corporate leader who walked away from my nine to five-ish to launch and grow my business. In this podcast, I share insights on mindset, business productivity, habits and strategies to help you take control of your to do list and maximize your day, which will help you feel more confident and less overwhelmed and getting more done in less time. I'm so excited you're here. Go ahead, listen in.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to the maximizeize your Day podcast. I'm so excited that you're here Today. You guys are in for a treat because I had a unique opportunity to interview someone and it's kind of like a strange story. So I have to tell you do you know when you talk to someone about a special bag and all of a sudden you're scrolling on Facebook and the bag is right there? Has that ever happened to you? Because it's happened to me a lot. Or how about when you Google best CRM for my business and all of a sudden, you're getting all of these pop-ups and all of these emails and all of these Facebook ads on best CRM for my business, right? Well, I was having this conversation a few months ago where I was explaining how I make every effort to take Friday off. It doesn't always work out, but I make every effort to either schedule some self care or literally watch my favorite shows, or whatever the case may be, but I just don't do work specifically, anything that has to do with me, my family being present, and that's basically about the gist of it. Now, of course, I'm scrolling right on social media and I come across this book and the topic could not come in more timely because I just had that conversation a couple days prior. The book's name was Thursday is the New Friday Small world right, I know, I know Well, in that process of learning a little bit more about the author, I knew I had to have him on my podcast because I knew it was an opportunity to be able to explain how something so simple by taking one extra day off, even if it's a few hours.
Speaker 1:You know, sometimes when you're in the corporate world, I know that might be difficult, but at least striving once a month or, you know, having some type of routine where you give yourself a three day weekend without having to wait for that three day weekend, right. So I had the opportunity to interview him and I know that you guys are in for a treat. So I'm super excited for you to hear it and I would love for you to listen in. So welcome back to the maximizeize your Day podcast I am so excited to share today Joe Sanok. He is the author of Thursday is the New Friday. He is a TEDx speaker, a consultant and top podcaster with over 600 interviews. He has expertise in brain optimization, slowing down to spark innovation, which is so important in today's environment and the four-day work week. So welcome to my podcast and you are my first interview on the podcast, so I'm so excited to have you.
Speaker 2:I am so honored to be your first interview. We're going to set the standard high for future guests that you have on here.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, let's do it. So as a business productivity coach, I am a big believer in self-care, having a day to disconnect, and I actually have a staff member in my office and I make sure that she's off on Fridays. So when your book came about, I sent her a screenshot. I was like, when this book comes out, you're going to have to read it because you need to disconnect on Fridays. So tell me what made you write this book? What led you to it on Fridays? So tell me what made you write this book, what led you to it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, what's interesting is sometimes in your career there's kind of a trajectory, and then there's other times there's more of a returning home. And for me this has really been a return home, because I remember my freshman orientation in college and I'm sitting there, you know, I'm still in high school, about to graduate, and so we're looking at our academic advisors and talking to them about different things and they said, all right, you're going to make your schedule for this coming fall. And I raised my hand and I said well, do we have to go to class on Friday? Cause you know, I'm a high schooler that's used to going to class every single day. And they're like no, this is college, you can do whatever you want.
Speaker 2:And so throughout all of my undergraduate and graduate school I had a four-day work week, except for one semester when there was a mandatory Friday class. And so my first job I negotiated to have a four-day work week because that was just what I had lived all through college and I thought that was normal. I thought that was how people did it. You just say, hey, I want to do this. And then if they want to hire you, they say yes.
Speaker 2:But then over time I kind of got into my career and started working a five-day work week and started a private practice and a podcast and all these other things and really moved away from that. And then, when I left my full-time job in 2015, that first summer, I decided I was going to do an experiment and I took every Friday off to just see for that summer what things would look like, and every single month was financially better than the month before. And so that fall that became my permanent schedule and then I kept doing more and more time studies to see if I could work less in different areas or just adjust my schedule. And so as I was looking at writing a book, as I was working with a writing coach to really figure out my kind of unique point of view, it just kept coming back to the way that I view my schedule, that I don't feel like we need to buy into this hustle culture, that it's not healthy for us and also we can get more done when we give ourselves less time.
Speaker 1:I love that. I think it's so important, especially to be able to disconnect that time, and for a lot of small business owners, their biggest fear is walking away from their business and for the business to just blow it up right. So tell me about a small business owner who currently it is very well known that when you start a small business, you're basically working seven days a week. So how does someone just either either gradually do it or do they just rip off the bandaid and just start working four days a week? What is something you would recommend?
Speaker 2:Yes, I would start with that. There are certain industries that if you choose to go into those, it's more difficult than others. If you own a restaurant, sure that's going to be really difficult to just say I'm going to close down the shop three days a week. But let's think about how the average business owner even talks about their business. They might say, oh, it's my baby, it's my thing that I just love so much. But let's think about a baby, anyone that has a child. You're never going to give up on your child. You're never going to throw them away. You're never going to just say I'm done with you, but there are. This business isn't working, I give up on you. And so if we start with this kind of ego-driven mindset that this is my baby, all of this ego is wrapped up in it. That makes it a lot harder to just make good business decisions.
Speaker 2:Also, a lot of small business owners are going into business because they prefer that over having a job. They have a passion, they have an excitement, they have ideas. So usually it's more saying when can I say to myself enough is enough, more saying when can I say to myself enough is enough? Because, yes, we can work seven days a week. But should we work seven days a week? Are we being the most efficient with our time? Because what happens when we actually reduce down our time to just four days a week and give ourselves that time to slow down? We have better ideas.
Speaker 2:We also reveal to ourselves what's the best use of my energy, because if I'm only giving myself four days a week to work in my business, am I going to do the best things in that four days or the worst things? I'm going to do the best and I'm naturally going to drop the ball on the things I probably shouldn't be doing. So maybe I'll forget to take out the trash, maybe I'll forget to vacuum the office, maybe I'll forget all these other things, and that really reveals those are not the top priorities for me as the business owner. So imagine if, every single week, you were putting all of your best energy into your top priorities and then outsourcing other things. You're going to move forward faster than your competition, and so the argument that I have to work seven days a week to make this thing thrive just doesn't carry weight. And the brain research actually shows that you're being less and less productive. But it's only the equivalent of probably 40 hours or 50 hours a week and then you're burned out and stressed out and not doing your most creative work.
Speaker 2:So if we're kind of looking at how do you start to implement it? I would say, whatever your schedule is right now, just rein it in a little bit. So if you're working five days a week, maybe take every other Friday afternoon off and just try that for a bit. Get it in the schedule that every other Friday you're going to just take off and then once you see that you're getting more done, that you're doing better work, then it becomes easier and easier to use the blueprints that we have in. Thursday is the new Friday to be able to enact that within the business.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that Now in your book you speak about the three inclinations. Can you walk us through those?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the book kind of walks through things in a little different way than most books. So most productivity books are really based on the industrialist model of here's the exact blueprint. You have to follow it. It's very prescriptive You're either in or you're out. The new way that books are being written and how businesses are is more of an evolutionary model, where we have a book that gives you a menu and then you, as a smart person, learn how to apply it and experiment and adjust so you can actually do more with the book than just follow a couple of checklists.
Speaker 2:So the flow of the book starts with your internal, because if you don't do the internal work first and you're doing all these productivity things, you might be working on the wrong things, you might be doing it from the wrong state of mind, you might be causing harm to other people because you haven't done your own inner work. And so we start with the internal. So we'll talk about the internal inclinations. But then it moves into slowing down, because then we want to make sure that we allow our brains to be most optimized instead of being burned out, and then we barely recover over the weekend and then we move into killing it. So that first step is looking at our internal inclinations. So there's three internal inclinations that top performers have based on the research. So the first one is curiosity, the second one is an outsider's perspective and the third one is an ability to move on it. So let's briefly talk about each of those.
Speaker 2:So curiosity, you know, when I was writing that chapter I was like well, what kind of things come to mind when I think about curiosity? Well, curiosity killed the cat. What a terrible saying. If you're curious, you're going to die. I looked into it and in 1910, the Washington Post, on the front page, had a story that said curiosity killed the cat and there was national news about this cat that got stuck in a chimney. It was a really slow news week and the nation was watching this cat to see if it got out and the firefighters ended up pulling out a dead cat. And so then curiosity killed the cat is on the front page of the news. But when we're kids, curiosity is what leads it, because everything is new to us. It's the first rainbow we've seen, it's the first car accident we've seen, it's the first everything. And we're like is this how the world actually is all the time, or is this outside of the norm? We're always sorting through, is this normal or is this abnormal? But then at a certain point in adulthood we think we have it all together, we think we understand it. We stop being as curious, but effective leaders continue down that path of curiosity.
Speaker 2:The second one, having an outsider perspective, is really interesting because there's been a lot of research showing that outsiders actually have statistically more influence than the people inside of a group. There was this research study where they brought together people about six or eight people. They'd sit them down at a table and they'd show them a specific color, and it was either blue or it was green. And so they'd hold up this color and say is this blue or green? Everyone would answer and for the most part they would agree. There'd be a couple that were kind of in the middle and people would say that's blue. No, that were kind of in the middle of the people would say that's blue, no, I think that's green. But then in the second part of the study they brought in some scientists that were working with the study and occasionally when something was blue, they would say green, or when it was green they would say blue, and they found that statistically, those outsiders actually had more influence on the group than they should have. And we see this over and over. If you've ever started at a new job, you're kind of learning and you're like why do they do it that way? Like that's just doesn't even make sense, but they've always done it that way, so they keep doing it that way. But that outsider actually comes in and says this is really abnormal, the way that you guys do this. We should change some of these things and a smart organization will listen to that outsider.
Speaker 2:And the third one is an ability to move on it. If we think of a spectrum of, on one side we have speed and on the other side we have accuracy, there are many things in life we want to be accurate all the time. If I'm flying on a plane, I want them to land it accurately. If I'm going to go in for surgery, I want my doctor, I want her to spend as much time as she needs to if she's cutting me open, like, don't go for speed, go for accuracy. But in business and in mostly life, there's very few times that we need to be as accurate as we think we do, and so often we get paralyzed by perfection and a lot of our educational system has made this the way that we think.
Speaker 2:In college we write a paper, we go to the writing center, we overthink it, we turn in the draft, we get some feedback, it comes back to us and then we turn in that final paper and then we just get the grade. That's not how business works, that final paper, and then we just get the grade. That's not how business works. That's not how life works. If I write a blog post and there's something in it that's inaccurate, I can change it. If I launch a product and my customers don't like it, I can change it. There's very few things that when I send it out, that's the end. And so when we start to move towards speed over accuracy, we get that feedback, we get that understanding. We're able to adjust and move with the kind of time and with the customers to be able to get more done quicker.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that in so many ways, and I completely agree with you in regards to perfection. I work with clients all the time and the first thing they say is well, I need to perfect it, or I need to perfect my this, or perfect my, or perfect my course or my quiz or my business, and you never perfect it. You refine it as you go and we tend to get stuck a lot in that, so I love that. And one last question I have for you, joe, is what has been the one thing that has changed the way in which you look at time and work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would 100% say that it's when we slow down that that's actually the key for us going just explosively fast. On the other side, the hustle culture is just not working. The health outcomes are worse, the productivity outcomes are worse. Iceland just did a 2,500 person study across multi-years that was across multi-disciplines, so all sorts of different types of people working a four-day workweek and they found that their productivity was higher. They found that their health outcomes were better. Their happiness outcomes were better. We're seeing across the board that the four-day workweek is actually better for people and it's also better for creativity and productivity.
Speaker 2:And so when I really started to own that, to be able to say not only am I going to take a three-day weekend, but I'm going to find micro breaks, I'm going to give myself permission to not just work, work, work and to have things in my schedule that just are unmovable and are hard boundaries. That makes it so much easier to be able to do the good work. When I show up, I can actually sprint and kill it. So, for example, every Wednesday I do improv with a group and I laugh harder during that hour and a half than I do the rest of the week. It's like a full ab workout because it's just hilarious and my kids are always with my parents. On Wednesdays I go to improv. It's one of those things that lights me up, and when we have those things that we figure out, it helps us do better work.
Speaker 2:So one of the kind of last tips I would give people to practically implement this is that look to your coming weekend and I want you to add one thing and remove one thing. So look and see what's one thing that you could add into your weekend that's just going to light you up. So maybe it's a book that's been on your nightstand that you have been meaning to start but you haven't really taken the time to do it. Schedule two hours to make sure your kids are taken care of and you just get to go read for a couple hours. Schedule that coffee date with a friend that every time you see him you're like we should get together, but you never do.
Speaker 2:Spend time alone going for a hike, or going with your family for a hike or something that you know is going to be exciting. So put something small into your weekend that's going to light you up, but then remove something as well. So maybe you have a coffee date scheduled with a friend, but every time you leave that relationship you feel like trash and you know that you just should cancel that time with that toxic friend. I give you permission Cancel that. Find those things that just drain you on the weekend. It could be mowing your lawn, it could be getting groceries. Find something to test and when you test weekend after weekend, just adding one thing and removing one thing, you're going to start to find those things that really light you up and that really drain you, so that you can make sure that your weekend really sets you up to be able to have a stronger week ahead of you.
Speaker 1:Love that. I love that. Joe, where can people find you? Where can they hear more about your book?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my website's joesanockcom. We have all of my keynote and writing information there. You can buy Thursdays, the new Friday wherever you like to get your books. I'm sure your local bookstore would like to have you order some there. We actually have something going on right now where, if people order 10 books, they can be part of the Thursday is the new Friday mastermind group, which is going to be a six week mastermind group that I host, where we're going to be talking about deeper content around. Thursday is the new Friday and implementing it. We're going to have hot seats where we can learn from each other about how people are implementing the four day work week, so that we can learn from each other and kind of get good ideas. But, even more importantly, people are going to be able to network with each other. So we're having tons of top podcasters that are coming in and other influencers that really want to connect with each other, and so you can just buy 10 books wherever you buy your books and then go over to Thursdaysthenewfridaycom and submit your receipt there.
Speaker 1:Awesome, awesome. It's been such a pleasure to have you. I know there's so much value to anyone that's listening to this show once I publish it, and I'm just so excited to be able to see what comes out of this. I know that you're going to have great success with the book, so I'm super excited to have you. So, guys, there you have it Once again. I'll drop his link on the show notes and you'll be able to get more information there as well. So thank you, guys, and I will talk to you guys soon.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, there you have it. Was that amazing, or what Talk about? You know, some of the takeaways that he explained is that when you do intentionally take that additional time off, you actually get more productive. You're able to do more with less time and do it within a in a zone of creativity and a zone of productivity where you feel like you were able to definitely accomplish something. Now I'm not sure if you caught that, but the three takeaways that he discussed are the three internal inclinations, one being curiosity, the other being outsider perspective and the other is the ability to move on it.
Speaker 1:How crazy is that? I'm sure that there were many things that he said that you were like what I do that already. What? Why didn't I think of that? So I hope that you enjoyed the podcast interview. I cannot wait to hear your feedback. Feel free to drop your feedback below, and also I will be doing a raffle inside of my private Facebook community, so you'll find the link to get Joe's book, as well as join my private community in the show notes. Until next time, chat soon.